Robe Lights Up 2018’s Dreambench Festival In Spain

Robe’s lighting range has lit up the 2018 Dreambench festival, which is
staged near the fishing town of Villaricos in Andalucía, Spain. The festival
sees 155,000 music fans descend on the town to celebrate the best of dance
music.

Given the high energy of dance music, it was important to get the right lighting.
That’s why main stage production designer, Eduardo Valverde, specified 70 Robe
MegaPointes, 50 Spiiders and 16 BMFL spots. These were all supplied by rental
specialist Fluge.

Eduardo, founding partner and creative director of Pixelmap Studios in
Madrid, lights many dance music events and has become a bit of an expert in the
specific optical needs of the genre. This was his third year at Dreambeach
designing the full visual concept – including structures, the stage itself, the
screens, video content and lasers – plus the lighting.

When formulating a design, numerous aspects are considered. The venue for
a start, which in this case was a massive outdoor arena; then the type of
artists performing in terms of bands, DJs, dancers, aerialists, etc, and
naturally, the style of the music. Once that’s all clear in his head, he
already has the first ideas for the architecture of the structures which form
the base of each environment. Then comes the all-important practicalities
related to the process – venue capacity – and budget, alongside the build
timescale.

For this show, the stage construction featured some serious metalwork and
had an epic ‘wide’ look – characteristic of many dance style events. The set
featured a series of convex video-clad semicircles protruding horizontally above
the deck, resembling a giant – spacey – slot machine!

The Spiiders were positioned along the top edge of the structure and down
the offstage sides; the MegaPointes were distributed all over the stage and the
BMFLs were on the front of the stage deck.

The Spiider’s powerful wash-beam attributes were used to create a uniform
base of colour to wash the entire stage and set areas. Eduardo loves the
intensity of the fixture’s output together with the zoom and the highly effective
strobe function.

The MegaPointes were utilised for all the beam-work and the main effects
with their speed and brightness. “We used this fixture for its true ‘hybrid’
capabilities,” said Eduardo, “they are a high impact beam light as much as a
gorgeous spot with a fantastic zoom.”

On the floor, the 16 BMFL Spots served as sky scanners; their impressive
output scouring the night sky, shooting up into the stars and making the perfect
impression visible for kilometres around, even when in deep saturated colours.

Also on the rig were another 500 or so fixtures – a selection of LED
strobes, blinders and battens.

The biggest challenge in lighting Dreambeach was to ensure that each
artist playing the main stage had a different looking show and ambience for
their sets. The video-heavy nature of the design and the MegaPointes were key
to making this happen.

Eduardo worked with a large team of lighting, laser, video and pyro/FX
programmers, operators and technicians to run all the technical visual elements
of the show.

He enjoys operating the lighting console himself on these occasions, “I
love feeling the music and the rhythms and creating the scenes in real-time working
in collaboration with the video and laser directors … that’s when you get
those real magical ‘goose-bump’ moments at FOH.”.

A typical Dreambeach lighting/video/laser/FX operating shift runs to 12
hours, so they swap crew in and out, ensuring breaks and rests so everyone can
stay fresh and give the show their best when it’s their turn to engage.

Guest lighting operators/directors arrive with some artists and are
happily accommodated with their show files or own consoles, and that’s also a
source of great interest for Eduardo and his team.

Joining him as part of the core Dreambeach creative team this year were head
programmer and lighting operator Juan Manuel Lazaro, lighting operator Sergi
Prat, laser designer and operator Javier Sanchis, video designer/operator Jonay
Hernandez.